What Makes Loyalty Programme Work: The Effectiveness of the Battle Pass System in Chinese MOBA Game in the Perspective of Consumer Perception

As the online video game industry becomes increasingly competitive, game marketers have introduced various loyalty programmes to keep player retention, the Battle Pass system is one of them. This work aimed to find the drivers influencing loyalty programme effectiveness. In other wordsother words, to understand how the loyalty program in online video games really works, especially in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games. To answer this question, the Battle Pass system in the Honor of Kings, one of the most popular MOBA games in China, has been chosen to be studied. This paper conducted semi-structured interviews to obtain players' veritable feelings about this loyalty programme from multiple angles. The results of these in-depth conversations provide viable explanations of the research questions from which 5 main motivations have not been observed in other research and were summarized as factors affecting loyalty programme effectiveness. Overall, this work fills the research gaps using qualitative research methods; in addition, it provides the possible indicator for the research on consumer behavior in online video games and the value of guiding marketers to formulate practices that rely on the continuous engagement of their users.